Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 51

The Prince gnashed his teeth. The correct choice was to disown Freia and protect his world. That was the act rational thought indicated to be most useful. Nothing could supersede the Spring's interest. It was a measure of his own deterioration as a sorcerer that the rational and right decision made him uneasy. She had brought herself into her difficulties through disobeying his direct command. She must find a way out alone.

Besides, she had long made him uncomfortable in a number of ways: little unspoken hopes and expectations, the demand for reciprocation her fondness placed on him, and his own mixed feelings toward her with his knowledge of her mixed feelings toward him. Nay, he thought, 'twere wiser to shuck her off now and let her hate him: far preferable to her insinuation into his plans and his life. The boy Dewar was a sorcerer, and a good one; Prospero knew he would be able to deal with him when the time came. They spoke the same language. But Freia was determinedly different and taxed his endurance. He would be better off without her. And she had gotten along right well without him in the past, ranging her forests and wastes.

Yet the uneasy feeling sat on the back of his neck. Prospero gnashed his teeth again and spurred Hurricane to gallop, and Hurricane did, his hooves barely touching the ground, the wind of his pa.s.sing raising the grey dust and whipping it into spinning devils.

36.THE SELF-POSSESSED, VIGOROUS WOMAN WHO HAD Sent her gryphon straight down into a battle was gone. The stiff changeling whose body was laced with lurid lines of fresh scars was neither self-possessed nor vigorous.

Dewar wooed her. The strenuous escape from Landuc had sent her into a relapse, and her weakness and mild fever were worsened by nausea and vomiting. He encouraged her to rest and brought bland, nouris.h.i.+ng food for her uncertain stomach, even (though he knew it not) as Gaston had. Freia said that she must get home soon-she mentioned it every time they spoke-and Dewar agreed, but pointed out that exceeding her strength would hurt her again. He tried to divert her with found treasures: wave-worn streaked or spark-holding stones, roseate and mottled wave-sh.e.l.ls stranded by the tides, a bowl of giant black-stamened purple flowers which grew on seaweed mats offsh.o.r.e.

But Freia would not be diverted, and she winced when he touched her; she would not smile at his smiles, nor swim with him, nor walk along the surf-sculpted beaches. Disconcerted, Dewar doubled his efforts to be amiable and considerate. On the third day, he brought her pale fish, which he had speared diving in the waves, poached in broth for her lunch and sat in a chair by the bed with a thick square book whilst she ate little tentative mouthfuls.

"Now, about getting you home," Dewar said.

Freia stopped eating. She waited, wariness in her face.

"I can take you there along the Road," Dewar said, "but you're still sick and you're not getting better. I think it would be better to take you through a Way. Do you know what a Way is?"

She shook her head, a tiny movement.

"A Way is how we got here," Dewar explained. "It's a temporary connection between two foci of the Well."

Freia's expression glazed with incomprehension as he said this, and when he said "You see?" she shook her head.

"It's very simple-" Dewar began.

"I don't care about that," Freia said. "1 just want to go home. Does-does my father know where I am?"

"He does not," said Dewar, "which is why I want to take you home myself. Of course, if you just want to go there alone, I'll not keep you."

"I don't know how," Freia said.

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He nodded, his friendly expression still in place. "Then I'll take you there, you see. But I need to know where your home is to take you."

"I don't know," Freia said.

"How did you get here? Not here, to Landuc?"

"Trixie," she said. "She's gone. He made me send her away. I told her go home."

"Who?" Dewar asked, distracted.

"Trixie," Freia said. "She went away."

He opened and closed his mouth, swallowed a sharp retort. "Who made you send Trixie away?"

"Otto," Freia whispered. She pushed the luncheon-tray aside.

"So the gryphon was how you got to Landuc," Dewar said, "and you don't know how she got you there, and you don't know where you started." Prospero must have had very good reasons for keeping the girl so ignorant of the world, but Dewar couldn't imagine what they were. "You must tell me about your home," he said, opening his book, "so that I can find it in this Ephemeris. This is a book which lists all the places-all the foci in all the worlds the Well sustains-and it tells where they are."

Freia stared at him like a tousled owl, big-eyed and unblinking, her head between hunched shoulders, her legs drawn up to her chest. The palpable wrongness knotted around her. Dewar's neck p.r.i.c.kled. Was she mad? Had she been mad all along, one of those who swing from humor to humor as a weatherc.o.c.k follows the wind? She had utterly altered from the person he'd met in Chenay.

"Freia, tell me something about your home," he urged.

"I can't," she said.

"Why not," he said, very patiently.

"I promised I wouldn't ever."

"If you don't tell me," Dewar said, his voice taking on an edge of impatience, "I cannot take you there."

"You wouldn't," Freia said coldly. "You'd leave me behind again. You'll go without me. You want to find Prospero, you said so. That's what you really want."

Her distrust was insultingly apparent. Dewar's mouth set Sorcerer and a Qentteman 423.

in a line. "I won't leave you behind," he said. "And I have apologized. Both times," he pointed out.

"Apologized," she echoed, still cold.

"Yes, apologized! And offered to a.s.sist you. There's not a sorcerer in all the worlds who'd give you either apology or a.s.sistance, madame. You are fortunate that I am a gentleman as well."

"I don't believe you," she said. "You said you'd take me home. Why did you say that if you didn't know where?"

"I presumed you had the wit to know where you'd been," Dewar snapped. "Clearly I was mistaken." He rose to his feet, and her wide-eyed flinch away from him as he did angered him beyond anything she had said. "If you do not wish to be returned home, I shall return you to the Emperor's hospitality at once, as I regret that I can be of no service to you," he said. He stalked out of the room.

Dewar paced upward through a spiral of rooms to his workroom in the center of the round white house, steaming. Sister she might be, but he had no obligation to pamper a madwoman nor to play riddle-games with a fool. Let her begone, and soon. He set the Ephemeris on the worktable there, unrolled its companion Map, and in a little pocket-book began to calculate a Way to Landuc.

Halfway through the exercise, his anger began to recede. Hadn't she said she'd promised not to tell anyone about her home? Then she couldn't tell him without breaking her promise and suffering the consequences.

His pen slowed, stopped; the nib began to dry.

There must be some way of working around the barrier of the vow. That was the real problem. Possibly her distrust stemmed from the promise's working on her, as they'd gotten along amiably in the past. Dewar sat back on his stool and frowned, his anger deflected by the conundrum of breaking Freia's word without breaking it.

He couldn't tell her he was trying to do so; that would nullify the whole thing. He had to trick her. Dewar riffled the Ephemeris. So many places and things worth mentioning, and many more not: the world was a vast and varied congeries.

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'ECizaAetfi Ttfittey The Ephemeris! He could put a spell of memory on the book, give it to her, let her look at it privately, and take it back; then the book would rehea.r.s.e again her turnings of pages, her pauses, and he'd be shown her home-without her breaking her vow.

Dewar smiled and set about ensorcelling his Ephemeris.

Among the contorted, straining roots of a mighty tree sat Prospero, his Castellan, and his Seneschal. They were not small men, but the mossy roots were thick and high enough to make excellent upholstered benches, or, in the case of the Seneschal, Scudamor, a backrest. He blended with the tannin-rich brown moss and the mulch and earth and wood, and his wide-shouldered torso seemed to grow out of the root, rather than to be superimposed on it. Utrachet the Castellan's face and wiry body still bore marks of his ordeal as a prisoner in Landuc. He sat on a root opposite Scudamor, dangling one foot and twitching it slightly, head c.o.c.ked to attend Prospero, who sat against the broad mighty trunk of the tree.

Prospero had chosen this place for its power, its privacy, and its connotations. The Spring swelled out from the roots on the other side of the tree, behind them. It seeped along the stone and into the thick carpet of rich moss that flourished with the tree. There were no sounds but those the three made themselves and the whisper of the water.

"Freia's found," Prospero began.

The other two nodded. They had expected no less, but his gravity since his arrival had put them in mind of the worst, and they waited apprehensively for him to continue.

"She's prisoner," Prospero said. "The Emperor hath her sorcerously confined and protected in such a way that I cannot break in and free her."

"Could someone else?" Utrachet asked.

"Nay. Must be broken in the manner it was laid, else break her, and she's watched ceaselessly. I investigated freeing her myself and found 'twas not to be done." He looked from one to the other: gauging them. "The Emperor Avril hath her hostage, and he presented me terms for her release.

Sorcerer and a (jentkman 4Z5.

These have I come to discuss with you, for we'll all bear the weight of the matter, and I would be certain I do not mis-value some item nor ignore some opportunity. 1 confess I'm not unbent in a.s.saying the bargain."

"Lord, how can they bargain? She is your daughter," Scudamor said. "What good is she to anyone there? What use to keep her against her will? She cannot love them for it."

"She's my blood, a hold on me, Scudamor."

"You have not been there, Scudamor," Utrachet said. "They are strange. They see value in things beyond belief here. They see the Lady's worth and covet her, though she must be prisoned to be kept."

"She's worth as much as I'm willing to give for her," Prospero said, "and there's the crux of the matter. Hear what Avril would have of me ere she go free from his claws.

"His first demand is that I shall renounce the practice of sorcery save in the petty forms of Summoning, Sending, and Opening of Ways.

"His second demand is that I shall renounce all claim to precedence in Landuc, abdicating my place in the succession, which oath shall bind me and all my after-kin.

"His third demand is that I shall vow never take arms against Landuc again.

"His fourth demand is that I shall pay reparations for the war most recently past, in a sum which I calculate is near double his expense.

"His fifth demand is that I shall swear fealty to him personally.

"His sixth demand is that I shall dwell in the Palace of Landuc on his sufferance.

"His seventh demand is that he shall choose a husband for Freia.

"His eighth demand is that I shall yield to him all t.i.tles in all lands where I hold same."

Prospero's voice, as he recited the list, was cool, his manner remote.

Scudamor broke the silence that followed. "Lord, these are difficult things to do."

426 -=> T&zafjetfi Wittey "He cannot expect all," Utrachet said. "They begin by asking more than they want. What things does he love best among those?"

"Those that would cripple me most," Prospero said. "Sorcery; reparations; vows of fealty. He knoweth naught, I'm certain, of this place. Freia told me she'd said no word of it."

"If they handled her as me," Utrachet said, "she has endured much in silence."

"In the eighth demand his mind's full of my large holdings in Landuc, that I might dispute with him," Prospero said, "for he seized them lawlessly 'pon his accession. For those I care nothing now. I'd more likely pursue the claims of my friends, who have suffered greatly 'neath his heel. But the implication must include here."

"Fealty," Scudamor said, "is to acknowledge him as above you-" The idea was puzzling, self-contradictory. Who could be above Prospero?

" 'T would sound repercussions here. The nature of such an oath is that it's ever-binding, all-binding. It becometh of the essence of the oathgiver and he cannot scape it without fatality. Forswearing sorcery would mean I'd no longer be able to build this place as I have done, would not complete what I've planned here."

The Seneschal and Castellan looked at one another.

"He playeth high stakes for one girl," Prospero said. "I'm minded to bluff him: deny him all, see what he doth."

"He might kill her," Utrachet said.

"Ah." Scudamor shook his head, visibly grieved at the idea.

" Tis the whole of my life, of my realm," Prospero said.

"You wish to refuse him these things," Scudamor said.

"He has no use for Freia, himself," Utrachet said, "he might slay her as some do that foul their prey when they cannot eat it."

"If you gave way in small matters-"

"He'd demand more. Your own lives are at stake here also, gentlemen. Do not forget that. Yours, your descendants, everything here."

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"And your descendants," Scudamor pointed out.

" 'Tis little matter. I've learned that I have a son. Utrachet, hast met him. The fellow who fell through the fire at the end of Perendlac, after me."

"I recall," Utrachet said. "A powerful man."

"A boy yet by our reckoning, called Dewar. Rash, impetuous-but hath qualities in him of endurance and deeds as well. Nay, I've no concern about descendants."

Utrachet looked across at Scudamor, and Scudamor looked at the moss between his feet, an expression of distress on his dark face.

"Speak, Scudamor," Prospero said. "I have asked for counsel."

"Lord," Scudamor said slowly, "I cannot think it wise to rely on the future to provide you with an heir. The Lady is ours and although Utrachet and I can understand the necessity of not redeeming her at so great cost, I think the others will be confused by it. For did you not set her here among us and bid us honor her? And she earned honor herself, by taming the gryphon, by teaching us the ways of the wood for hunting, of the tossflowers for weaving, of the healing herbs. She told us about bow-wood-she knows all the world's ways. You have risked much and paid dear to bring the rest of us who went there with you home again, here. It seems strange to leave her at their uncertain mercy. She is ours."

Utrachet's unblinking eyes were on Scudamor, but he watched Prospero sidelong and saw that he struggled with this speech.

"Master," Utrachet said, "I do think there is truth in that, that the Lady belongs here. We know nothing of the future; your son is not here, and you said he is hostile to you. It would be weakness to leave one of our own in their hands, and the strength we might get from doing so would be tainted."

"The weakness to come from buying her free will cripple us," Prospero said. "My son's young yet; I'll win him to me. He'd be a stronger and more able ally than she hath been or could ever be. He is a sorcerer."

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"Etizatietfi "Then could we not rely upon him, when you had him won over, for sorceries, if you could not work them?" Scu-damor said. "Not all making is done with sorcery, Master, you have said this yourself. Walls are built with stone and sweat."

Prospero held himself very still.

"You have asked, Master, and we have given our counsel," Utrachet said. "Shall we leave you?"